


The Ballerino (and other stories)

by cookie_full_of_arsenic



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bonding, Found Family Feels, Friendship, Gen, Heart-to-Heart, Male-Female Friendship, POV Natasha Romanov, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-02
Updated: 2018-07-30
Packaged: 2019-06-01 11:23:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 4,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15142025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cookie_full_of_arsenic/pseuds/cookie_full_of_arsenic
Summary: This is a series of ficlets about the most awesome male-female friendship in the MCU, and possibly the world. Other Avengers are sure to pop up sooner or later.





	1. The Ballerino

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, here goes - my first multi-chapter fic. I'll post three ficlets to start with, but there are more on the way. 
> 
> I adore the friendship between Natasha and Clint. It was definitely my favourite part of Avengers: Age of Ultron (except maybe the part where they all try to lift Thor's hammer, because that's just gold) and I wanted to explore how it might have developed. Although the dynamic duo are globe-trotting spies/assasins for much of this fic, I can't promise much action. It's more character-focussed and introspective, because Natasha is a beautiful riddle wrapped in an enigma, wrapped in a catsuit. 
> 
> I have borrowed bits and pieces from the comics as well as the MCU. Hope you enjoy!

The Ballerino

The performance was not going well. Natasha sat in the wings, clutching her twisted ankle. A bad sprain – she could barely point her toes – and her head was pounding too. On stage, the black-costumed dancers moved badly.

It wasn’t that they lacked grace. The problem seemed to be that they had forgotten how to space themselves out. A dancer’s arabesque became a brutal kick to another’s face. A pair collided and fell to the floor. There was blood on the boards.

“Natasha!”

A familiar voice called to her. The ballerino, dressed in green tights and a faintly Mediaeval-looking jacket. He had a ridiculous green cap with a feather in it, and a quiver full of arrows. Of course, he was playing Robin Hood.

“Natasha!”

The ballerino battled his way across the stage, ducking under whirling limbs. Now that he was closer, Natasha could see a dark streak of blood down the side of his face. His feathered cap had disappeared, but the quiver full of arrows remained.

“Nat, you with me?”

Natasha blinked furiously, willing herself back into consciousness. Reality reasserted itself. The dancers were no longer dancers. Clint crouched in front of her, eyebrows knitting together almost comically as he looked her over, checking for wounds.

“I’m with you.”

“What’s the damage? Can you fight?”

“Sprained ankle.” She gestured to the left one. “And yes.”

“Stay on my right.”

She grabbed his forearm, steadying herself as he pulled her off the floor of the warehouse. Side by side, they headed back into the fray.


	2. Blue Moon

Blue Moon

Natasha and Clint had worked together in the field at least a dozen times before they started hanging out socially. It was a weird situation to be in, really. Each of them had saved the other’s life on more than one occasion. They had patched up each other’s wounds. They had developed a tag team fighting style that would make a pair of Mexican wrestlers proud. And they knew absolutely nothing about each other.

Not that it bothered Natasha. She was a loner by nature, and she had a complicated life. Friendships, or anything resembling them, could only complicate things further.

They were in Arkansas, and Natasha was wiping blood off her boots with a fistful of grass, when the words just popped out and surprised her. “Do you wanna go for a drink?”

Clint looked equally surprised, and maybe even a little wary. Natasha didn’t blame him. “Sure,” he said. “I know a place nearby that does a pretty good mojito.”

“How’s the vodka?”

“No idea. But the clientele are our kinda people.” That meant they didn’t ask questions or talk to cops, and Natasha had to admit (albeit reluctantly) that this was more important than the quality of the vodka.

Under cover of the gathering darkness, they walked along a couple miles of dirt road, saying very little. Natasha began to regret suggesting the drink. Why the hell would she do that? Did she want to sleep with the guy? After a couple of covert, dispassionate glances, she decided that she didn’t. He was good looking, but he didn’t affect her in any of the crucial areas, and Natasha was picky these days.

So what the hell was she doing? Going for post-work drinks with a colleague, like some … Assistant Manager of Administrative Resources, or whatever people who worked in offices called themselves. Acting like she wasn’t covered in a thin film of sweat and road dust. Pretending she hadn’t just snapped a guy’s neck. She slapped irritably at a tiny, black bug that settled on her arm. Then she saw an identical bug on the back of Clint’s neck, and slapped that one too.

“Jesus!” Clint exclaimed, and rubbed his neck. She’d slapped too hard.

“Sorry. There was a bug.”

He stared at her, in a worryingly sympathetic way. “You’ll feel better with a few drinks inside you.”

Poor guy. He thought she was feeling bad about the man she’d just killed. He thought she was still a real person with a soul and a conscience and all that shit.

 Weirdly, though, he was right – she did feel better with a few drinks inside her. The bar was dark and charmingly anonymous, and the mojitos made up for the sub-standard vodka. Conversation finally started to flow between her and Clint. They talked about places they’d been and people they’d met. They talked about music (Clint turned out to be a die hard Thin Lizzy fan) and he told her a long and involved joke about an elderly doctor and a patient with tennis elbow, with a punchline that made her choke on her booze.

Eventually though, it was time to leave. As Natasha hauled herself to her feet, Clint rested his chin in his palm and said “This was fun. We should hang out again some time.”

“Sure,” said Natasha, feeling a little awkward and hoping it didn’t show. Her exceptional ability to conceal what she was feeling was less than exceptional when she’d been drinking.

“I’m having a poker night, Saturday the 27th. You up for it?”

“Oh, I’ll have to check…”

“It’s okay if you haven’t played much, we’re not that serious. It’s mostly just an excuse to get together and drink.”

Shit. She was too drunk to manage this tactfully. “Clint, I’m really sorry if I gave you the wrong idea.”

“Hm?”

“No offence, but I don’t wanna be friends. It’s just that once in a blue moon, I feel the need for human contact. That’s what tonight was.” He looked at her blankly. Was he offended? Confused? Hurt? Panicking, she piled more words on top of the situation. “It’s nothing to do with you, you seem like a pretty great person. It’s just that I’m not into … people.”

By some miracle, he didn’t call her a bitch, or even turn away sulkily. Instead, he shrugged and raised his glass in a kind of salute.

“Well, then. See you at the next blue moon.”


	3. The Closet

The Closet

Natasha used to have pretty good gaydar. It was all part of her training, actually. She’d been trained to read people – their desires, their secrets, who they liked and who they loved. It was all valuable information when you had to manipulate someone, and Natasha was a pro at both obtaining and using that information. Then Clint came along and screwed everything up.

He seemed to have screwed things up permanently because after meeting him, her ability to figure out anyone’s sexuality dropped well below her usual standard. Take the other Avengers, for example. It took her an embarrassingly long time to notice that Tony had a bi-curious side, and she wasted a lot of energy trying to set Steve up with various women before she finally realised that his repeated refusal was less to do with shyness and more to do with a genuine lack of interest in dating.

Clint was a closed book. He often teased and bantered with Natasha, but never in a flirtatious way. She never caught him eyeing up her cleavage, nor did she notice him checking out attractive strangers of any gender. Then again, when they were working together they usually had more pressing matters to focus on than looking for eye candy.  

She could’ve just asked him if he was seeing anyone, but direct questions were not a part of her repertoire – people lied so often, it rendered them basically pointless. Instead, she decided to accept his invitation to poker night, and see what she could find out. It was only a matter of satisfying idle curiosity about a co-worker, she told herself. Nothing to do with wanting to spend time with the guy.

The poker night was held in the back room of an Irish pub. Natasha met Clint by the bar, and was surprised when he put his arms out for a hug. Not pleasantly surprised, not unpleasantly, just … surprised. She hugged him, and with their faces close together he muttered “I probably don’t need to tell you this, but I’m not _out_ to my friends, so, y’know.”

It took her about a second and a half to figure out what he meant – his friends weren’t aware of what he did for a living. She didn’t know if she should be surprised by this or not. In truth, she only had a vague idea of what friends were and weren’t supposed to know about a person.

“Okay, no shop talk. How did we meet?”

“At work. You’re part of the admin team.”

“Sure, I love paperwork. Can’t get enough of it.”

Clint led her through to the back room, where she was greeted with a combination of wariness and enthusiasm by his friends. They seemed like a pretty regular, blue-collar bunch. A little suspicious of strangers, but more inclined to be welcoming to strangers with big tits and big smiles. Natasha decided to smile a lot and play badly (at least by her standards) so that she could come again, if she felt like it.

Maybe she’d have to, because she didn’t manage to find out what Clint’s deal was. There was no tell-tale chemistry with any of the guys at the table, and any teasing directed at him was focussed mainly on his non-existent poker skills rather than his luck or history (or lack of either) with women.

It was two weeks later when she finally found out that Clint’s deal wasn’t women, or men, or both or neither. It was one woman, and her name was Laura.

Natasha caught the tail-end of a phone call Clint was making, and though the words were business-like, there was something in Clint’s expression as he hung up. A softness around the eyes, and the tiniest upward quirk of the corner of his mouth. A little relentless probing on Natasha’s part, and he admitted that he’d been seeing Laura for “Oh, I dunno, five or six months.”

“Well, is it five months or six?”

“It’ll be six months on the seventeenth.”

Natasha cackled gleefully. “You’re crazy about her! You’re probably planning a six month anniversary thing, aren’t you? Even though there’s no such thing as a six month anniversary because the word anniversary specifically means a yearly occurrence.”

“Where’s your sense of romance, lady?”

“It died in a fire.”

“What?”

“Long story. So does Laura know what you do?”

“No. I prefer to keep things separate, y’know? Be one person at work, another person with her, another person with my friends.”

“Hm. Emotional compartmentalisation. It sounds tiring.”

Though she had no intention of admitting it, Natasha was impressed. She’d never mastered the art of being different people. Sure, she could play different roles. She could act the part. But at her core, she was always herself. Nothing more, nothing less.

“It is tiring. I’m … I’m gonna tell her, soon.”

“Oh. Like, everything? You’re gonna tell her everything?”

“Well, no, obviously not everything. You can’t tell anyone everything, can you? But I’ll tell her enough.”

“That’s pretty gutsy.” And pretty stupid, she added silently.

“Nah. It’s just gotta be done.”

“Mm-hm. You’ll let me know how it goes, right?”

“Sure. I’m gonna need someone to go out drinking with me when she dumps my sorry ass.”

“There’s no guarantee she’ll dump you. I mean, she loves you, right?”

“Right.”

“And people in love make stupid decisions.”

“You’re such a bitch.”

It wasn’t the first time she’d been called a bitch, but it was the first time the word sounded less like an insult and more like an affectionate nickname.


	4. Family

The safe house barely qualified as a house. It was little more than a cobweb-strewn shed, with a space heater and a mattress. Still, beggars can’t be choosers. Natasha and Clint were in some rural corner of England (keeping a low profile while all the trouble in London blew over) and neither was enjoying the weather. The sky was the colour of a fresh bruise and it was, as the Brits said, “pissing it down”.

“We should get some sleep,” said Clint, peeling off his sodden socks, followed by his pants, and dumping them in front of the space heater. They had both been awake for well over 24 hours, and the mattress was big enough for two and looked pretty comfortable. Still, Natasha eyed it with trepidation.

She’d been here before. Not this particular safe house, but other safe houses. With other men. There was something about the strange, bleak intimacy of the situation, coupled with the lingering adrenaline of the job. Sure, Clint was crazy in love with Laura, but Laura was thousands of miles away. Was it really a good idea to get into bed together? Could they really lie side-by-side, partially undressed, with the rain falling hard above them and the space heater glowing orange like a candle flame, and manage to keep the sexual tension at bay?

***

“Jesus, Nat, your feet stink!”

“At least I cut my toenails. You’re gonna have my eye out with those talons.”

Clint rearranged himself, hopefully moving his feet and those vicious toenails a little further away from Natasha’s jugular vein. Natasha smiled to herself for no particular reason. They were silent for a few minutes. Natasha was bone-tired, but she found herself curious about something and unwilling to fall asleep just yet.

Clint, do you have any brothers or sisters?”

She looked down towards the opposite end of the bed. It was getting dark now, but she could still see his face clearly enough as he opened his eyes with obvious reluctance.

“I got a brother. His name’s Barney. We don’t talk much, these days.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“How about you?”

“Only child.”

“Was that lonely, growing up?”

“I don’t remember. I can’t have been much older than five when I got sent to the Red Room, and then I was surrounded by other girls. All the time.”

“You don’t sound like you enjoyed having a whole bunch of sisters.”

“Not particularly. I wanted a brother.”

“Yeah?”

“When the other girls my age started getting obsessed with boyfriends, I remember just wishing for an older brother instead.”

“Were you, like … not interested in sex, or something?”

Natasha laughed softly, then took a moment to arrange her words. It was a difficult thing to explain. Eventually, she settled on, “Brothers love you better.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, a brother loves you just as much as a boyfriend does. He’ll protect you, take care of you, all the important stuff. And he’ll do it just because you’re his sister. A boyfriend expects things in exchange. He wants you to have sex with him, not have sex with anyone else, maybe even marry him and have his babies…” For no more than a second, Natasha lost her train of thought. The subject of babies tended to distract her. “…But a brother doesn’t want anything from you. It’s unconditional. It’s pure.”

Clint didn’t answer for a long moment, and Natasha began to worry that she’d given too much of herself away.

“I had a buddy called Chuck, growing up,” he said, eventually. “I remember he had a thing for this girl called Hayley, but she didn’t feel the same. Told him she loved him like a brother, and he pouted about it for a month. I kinda wanted to punch him.”

“What, for being a pussy?”

“For being ungrateful. I mean, I don’t even like my brother but I’d still take a bullet for him. Hayley probably woulda done that for him, but he didn’t care. Acted like it was an insult.”

“Moron,” Natasha muttered. There was probably a lot more to be said, but she was too tired to say it.


	5. Wingman

Damn, he was gorgeous. Dark, messy hair that could do with being a little messier, and the perfect amount of scruff on his angular face. He was too far away for her to see what colour his eyes were and in any case, they were obscured by a pair of deeply unflattering glasses.

“Who are you makin’ eyes at?” Clint teased.

Natasha gestured discreetly across the bar, and Clint caught on at once. “The guy with the serial killer glasses?”

“They’re not _serial killer_ glasses, they’re, like, hipster glasses.”

“Total serial killer.”

“Whatever. I’m not planning on marrying the guy.”

“What are we talking about?” Tony piped up, putting down his third empty martini glass on the small table in front of them.

“Natasha needs some vitamin D,” said Clint, earning him a swift elbow to the ribs.

“Oh yeah? So who’s the lucky guy?” Natasha pointed at the man in question, and Tony gave a low whistle. “He’s hot. You gonna go talk to him?”

Tony probably expected her to walk right up to the guy and start flirting with him. It wasn’t an unreasonable assumption – she could hardly be accused of shyness, or of old-fashioned ideas about how men and women should behave. Still, there were nights when she just wanted to be chased. Tonight was one of those nights.

“He hasn’t looked twice at me all evening. Which is probably your fault.”

“How is it our fault?” said Clint, indignantly.

“No guy wants to come up to a woman who’s sat between two good-looking men.”

Tony smirked at the compliment, but Clint looked thoughtful. “I can fix that,” he said after a moment. He stood up, manoeuvred himself around the table and sat down next to Tony. Then he slipped an arm around Tony’s shoulders. Not in a casual, bros-being-affectionate way, but in an intimate, possessive, hands-off-my-man way.

“Oh, so it’s like that, is it?” said Tony. He quirked an eyebrow cynically at Clint, but even in the darkened club, Natasha could tell he was blushing. She was surprised, and maybe a little turned on. God, she really did need to get laid.

Speaking of which, it now took less than two minutes for the hot guy with the hipster/serial killer glasses to knock back the rest of his drink and walk nervously, but not timidly, towards her.


	6. Wedding Day

Natasha stood at the front of the church and prayed that she wouldn’t vomit. Her head was pounding, her legs were more than a little shaky and her mouth still tasted of whisky and strawberry-flavoured lip gloss. She hadn’t had time to brush her teeth.

When Clint had asked Natasha to be a groomsman at his wedding, Natasha’s first question was “Do I get to wear a top hat?” and her second was “Do you want help with the bachelor party?”

There were no top hats, unfortunately, though she was given a pretty nice jacket to wear over her pearl-coloured dress. As for the bachelor party, she played a small but crucial role in the planning. Clint’s friend Stan took care of most of it, but Natasha felt it her responsibility to guide him away from the idea of paintball. Guns – even paintball guns – reminded her of work, and she was fairly certain Clint would feel the same way.

On the night of the party, she threw herself into the role of a groomsman with gusto. She drank. She ate the biggest steak she’d ever eaten in her life. And under the influence of Jack Daniels, curiosity and plenty of encouragement, she made out with the stripper.

The next morning, she overslept and woke up in a fog of pain and panic. It had been a bad idea to have the bachelor party the night before the wedding, but there hadn’t been any choice. She and Clint had back-to-back assignments these days, and Clint wanted to spend as much time honeymooning with Laura as he could get away with.

Natasha dragged herself to the ensuite bathroom of her hotel room, took the quickest shower in the history of showers, and threw on her dress. She could only zip the damn thing halfway up her back, and she couldn’t reach the little button at the top. Clearly she was going to have to enlist Clint’s help, and beg him for ibuprofen while she was at it.

She stumbled down the hotel corridor and knocked urgently on his door, acutely aware that the back of her bra was on display. When he opened the door, she barged past him so quickly that she didn’t register that he was in a tee-shirt and boxers instead of his tux.

“Clint, I’m really sorry I overslept but I swear I’m gonna be presentable in time. You gotta help me with this…”

She trailed off. Clint had closed the door and was leaning against it. His face was pale and grim. Oh dear. This did not look promising at all. Still, maybe she was wrong and it was nothing more than a severe hangover.

“Sweetie, do you need to throw up?” Clint shook his head vaguely. “Do you need painkillers? I don’t have any but I can ask-”

“I can’t get married.”

Shit.

“What are you talking about?”

“I can’t get married, okay? I just can’t.”

“Look, Clint, it’s totally normal to feel anxious about it but you need to snap out of this and put your damn tux on.”

“You’re not _listening_.” He sank down and sat on the floor with his knees drawn up, running a hand through his hair in agitation. Natasha’s heart was beating hard, sending rapid waves of pain through her head. Dealing with emotional problems was not one of her strengths, and this morning she was particularly ill-equipped, not to mention short of time.

“Okay. I’m listening now.” She sat down beside him. He smelled of sweat. “Tell me what’s wrong. Did you and Laura have a fight or something?”

“No.”

“Well, don’t you still wanna be with her? You’ve been nauseatingly in love with her for three years.”

“It’s nothing to do with her. It’s ... You know what the next step is, right? Kids. You really think a guy like me oughta be raising a family? I don’t … I don’t deserve any of this.”

Natasha was beginning to understand. Clint’s technique of emotional compartmentalisation was failing. All the Clints were colliding into each other, and the one who had killed thirty-seven people was wreaking havoc.

“Clint, you’re a good person.”

“I’m a murderer. You can’t be both.”

“Look, none of the people you killed were innocent. Most of them were murderers themselves, several were terrorists, three of them ran a child pornography ring-”

“I remember, okay? I remember all the details.”

“My point is, you’ve saved more lives than you’ve taken. I’m certain of it.” Clint gave her a sceptical look. “You don’t think so? Come on, we’re gonna do the math.”

Since the hotel was one of those bland, business-type hotels where people came for conferences, each room had a desk and a supply of stationery. Natasha took a sheet of paper and a pen, then sat beside Clint and worked her way through each of his kills. Clint was stern and tense throughout the whole thing, and wouldn’t allow Natasha to overestimate the good or underestimate the bad. Still, when they were finished, the conclusion was obvious. Statistically speaking, Clint was one of the good guys.

“There you go,” said Natasha, throwing down the paper in triumph. “The numbers don’t lie. You officially deserve a little happiness. Now zip my goddamn dress up and put your tux on.”

Clint zipped her goddamn dress up and put his tux on. He moved mechanically and didn’t say a word. But by the time they got to the church, that haunted look was gone from his face, and when Laura walked up the aisle, his expression was a picture – it was like he couldn’t hold back the happiness any longer.

It was a little strange, watching them say their vows. Natasha had a sense of handing something over, and she felt … what, exactly? Possessive? Happy? Sad? Proud? Hopeful? Mostly she just felt nauseous and her head ached like a bitch.


	7. Battle

She was fourteen years old. Miss Bianchi, who taught History as well as Marksmanship, was lecturing the class on pitched battles, and Natasha was struggling to concentrate. Pitched battles seemed like a stupid idea anyway. Why would you pre-arrange a time and place to fight your enemy? Why would you voluntarily relinquish the element of surprise? Why would you give them the time and space to prepare? It just seemed so unnatural.

Natasha may have been young, but she already knew her business. Don’t rely on anyone but yourself. Give nothing away. Never attack from the front – always from behind, or from the side, or springing out of nowhere. Be the dagger in the dark. Life is war, and war has no place for decency or respect or any of those old-fashioned ideas.

***

Life is still war. Natasha is still the dagger in the dark. But now she’s at Tony’s side and Clint – _Clint_ , of all people – is the enemy. She moves forward, staring right at him. He mirrors her. Natasha wishes she could go back and explain to her fourteen-year-old self that sometimes you have to go face-to-face and toe-to-toe. There’s really no other way to fight a friend.


End file.
